


Fold me in your arms, let me see the sky

by ShiDreamin



Series: Dmcl Week 2020 [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Dmcl Bday Week Day 4, Engagement, Introspection, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Post-Time Skip, Wyverns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25996141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin
Summary: “You’re not going to die.” Claude scoffs, squeezing Dimitri’s fingers with his own. As reassuring as it is to have Claude by his side, it’s difficult not to focus on the tunnel seemingly growing narrow, every step taking them into thinner air.“I would be okay with that. Dying. For you.” His palms are far too sweaty for this. Claude had warned him to bundle up due to the long length of the flight over, but he hadn’t had time to change out of his flying robes before they entered Fury’s cavern.“Thanks, Mitya, I know. But I’d really rather you not.” Right. Okay.Dimitri prepares to be judged by Almyra's Fury.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Series: Dmcl Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882669
Comments: 10
Kudos: 55





	Fold me in your arms, let me see the sky

There is something to be said about the mountain peaks in Almyra. They are not taller than Faergus’, so Claude says, but they break through the clouds with such simple ease. The ones in Faergus are coated with ice and snow, pitfalls shaped like beasts when the earth shakes and the avalanches begin, but the ones in Almyra are plain. Simple. Nothing but dirt and stone.

It makes the single one with wings stand out all the more.

“Is this safe?” Dimitri whispers.

“Of course,” Claude replies, instant, and though Dimitri would easily give Claude his life twenty times over he admittedly hadn’t pictured dying like this.

The Fury stands tall above them, clawing its way into the heavens above, its spires the highest point in all of Almyra. Dimitri could not help but notice the sheer number of wyverns on the flight over; though Fodlan had its fair share of flying dragon friends, it seemed that the Fury alone had more than enough wyverns to double Fodlan’s population. They were dyed in colors and patterns Dimitri had never seen before, glorious, powerful.

The mountain shook when they landed, the force of a tornado under their feet.

Petunia, Claude’s wyvern, usually so reluctant to leave her beloved partner’s side, had scrambled away from them the moment she touched base with the rocky slope. Claude had laughed, delighted, waving away as she took flight once again, roaring at them twice before joining the other wyverns weaving patterns in the air. Then Claude had taken Dimitri’s hand, smiled, and tugged him into the tunnel.

He trusts Claude. He trusts Claude with everything he has: his friends, his kingdom, his life. His future. Of course he does—he loves Claude.

But he would really rather not have Dedue discover that he died tripping in a pitch-black cave in Almyra when he was supposed to be on his honeymoon.

“What happens if she doesn’t like me? Am I going to die?” Unlike Sothis, whose ethereal beauty was well known to be beyond human descriptions and artwork, Almyran gods and goddesses were known and celebrated with gusto. Every centimeter of the stone roads in Almyran cities were painted in a rainbow of colors to describe their spirits.

Kava, a goddess of family who was a suit of armor with ten swords stuck through her gut. She was a woman damned after abandoning her duties as a mother to be a soldier, and didn’t understand how important protecting her family was until they had forgotten her, cut down in combat. Her empty helmet is often drawn on a small netted piece overhanging Almyran homes near the dinner table, so that she may feel the warmth of a family once more.

The throat, twin brothers of water and flames who so often broke into combat. As one erupted in rage, his lava spewing between them, the other would burst into tears, solidifying the land. Eventually, as time passed, the land between them grew with every fight until it was so wide their voices could no longer reach each other, now separated by the Almyran coasts.

Lam, whose body sinks to the bottom of the Fury, a woman who sprouted wyvern wings and ate her husband when he dared betray her for another. Lam, who the wyverns obey, flying around her peak as men come to test themselves within her caverns, looking for an exit. All can come, to prove their love, their loyalty, walking side by side with the wyvern they have pledged to.

Not all can exit. Sometimes, a wyvern alone walks out, their human partner never to be seen again.

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Dimitri repeats. Claude laughs, the kind that shakes his fingers caught tight in Dimitri’s grip. He squeezes them once more, glancing around to no salvation. Try as he might, there is only darkness ahead, behind, around. It is as though the moment they entered the tunnel that it slammed shut behind them, trapping them in an endless shadow.

If Dimitri doesn’t appease Lam today, he has a feeling he will return to Fodlan a series of meat chunks in a winged casket.

“You’re not going to die.” Claude scoffs, squeezing Dimitri’s fingers with his own. As reassuring as it is to have Claude by his side, it’s difficult not to focus on the tunnel seemingly growing narrow, every step taking them into thinner air.

“I would be okay with that. Dying. For you.” His palms are far too sweaty for this. Claude had warned him to bundle up due to the long length of the flight over, but he hadn’t had time to change out of his flying robes before they entered Fury’s cavern.

“Thanks, Mitya, I know. But I’d really rather you not.” Right. Okay.

“Yes. I feel the same. I mean—you dying. I don’t want you to die. I never wanted you to die, and I still don’t.” Claude squeezes his fingers once more, slowing. Dimitri’s legs knock into his, or the floor, something that sounds like splashing far off.

“Relax,” Claude murmurs, “just close your eyes and walk. Lam won’t hurt you, I swear.” That’s easy enough for Claude to say. Dimitri swallows, reaching out into the nothingness.

The gods in Almyra are said to be cruel, are said to be daunting, walking the Earth not to forgive but to remind humanity of their past sins. Whereas the goddess welcomes all who wish to repent, the Almyran gods judge those before they accept their prayers. Lam, who sings of betrayal and hardship, seeks only those pure of soul. Those who treasure their partnerships above all.

Dimitri, who has only walked foot into Almyra two moons ago, wonders what she knows of him to judge.

“How long should we walk?” Dimitri asks, an echo in the cavern. He wishes sorely for a torch, or an ember, something to illuminate the dizzying path he wanders. Claude turns right, then left, and then they are descending down, downwards, the darkness all engulfing.

It welcomes him, like familiar arms around his eyes, telling him to sleep. That his bed is safe, that his covers are armor, that the stars above him do not swear punishment so much as promise justice.

“Do you trust me?” Claude asks, or echoes, or gasps, because then his hand is cold where Claude once was and he is standing there, alone. In the middle of the Fury, on the vengeful back of Lam.

“Claude?”

Darkness, Dimitri knows, is all engulfing, but it’s just _sight_. It’s blindness, in one eye, standing in a freezing river under the light of burning trees, fighting with one’s bare fists against an army clad in crimson. It’s terrifying cold where snow touches and one cannot see, cannot know, except for when it freezes along the skin. But it’s just sight. He’s learned to live with it halved.

It still seizes his heart when the ground shifts beneath him, and there is no one to grab his hand.

“Claude!” Dimitri shouts, stumbling forward. The walls don’t shift, the tunnel doesn’t move, logically, reasonably, and the years of combat atop horses and wyverns, on ground and in heavy armor, should make him more than ready for a change in scenery. Yet, as his foot slips on the floor, it is as though a tunnel has opened up beneath him, and he falls through it, his yell spiraling upward.

He is alone, in darkness, in faith, and the floor seems to sift and bubble with every gasp that escapes his throat. Is this real? He touches the ground, expecting it to be wet, to sting, perhaps, the boiling grounds of a wyvern’s stomach.

It’s dry. Rocky. Dirt.

Dimitri breathes.

“Claude?” He calls out, raising a hand to the tunnel walls. The air closes in around him, not dissimilar to the frozen flakes in Faerghus said to choke a man within his lungs. His breaths come and go in forced pacing, walking forward or backward, wherever the darkness takes him. “Claude?”

His voice echoes, even if the tunnel seems to narrow, and he must hunch in order to squeeze under the ceiling. His path is so narrow, so _tight_ ; his hands touch something wet and he startles, but no, it’s just his own sweat. He’s hot. He’s cold. He wishes sorely that Claude were holding his hand, teasing him for his clammy palms, kissing him under he could find his pace.

Claude is not here. But he would never abandon Dimitri, and that, that Dimitri can grasp onto.

“… Lam?”

Dimitri doesn’t know what to expect. The goddess never makes her blessings known—a baby living to childhood, a bountiful harvest, the ability to live another day: those are the signs of her watching over them. She doesn’t descend from the heavens, nor does she slumber in one spot, instead embracing her children no matter what, so long as they pray.

Lam, if she is watching, does not give any visible reactions. There are no spikes in his feet, nor sudden light pouring in to the tunnel. But it broadens, and he finds himself straightening once more, drawing to his full height without worry of smashing into the ceiling. His steps grow a little less clumsy, the road a little less winding, and though he descends it does it with the grace of a king stepping into the unknown, his head held high.

Claude had told him not to bring his lance, and here, staring into the dark path under furious eyes, he finds its good that his hands grasp at nothing but air.

“Are you listening, Lam?” There may be no miraculous opening of light, but his steps feel lighter. The cavern bends and dips like jaws, curling around him, tasting him on her tongue. Dissecting. Knowing.

Seeing his caverns, his bends and dips. The tunnels left empty when lost voices began to swirl, the gaping holes within him, gouged from him, the missing piece of his face.

The warmth, then, when Claude had seen him in Gronder Field. The kind that smells like the spices he can’t quite parse out, the trailing light that guides him under the star filled skies that stretch for miles, the whispers at night under the covers, as though they’re the only ones in the world.

Lam sees him. She peers into him, claws at him, angry, frantic. Familiar, scarred by the people she loved, trusted, would have given up her life for. Those who paid her back with a scar across her face, an eerie silence to her solitude.

“Lam,” Dimitri says, wondering if that Lam has her wings around his neck, that she has her tail sweeping the sky. Thinking about her face when her rider had held her in his arms, not on her, but by her side, laughing, kissing. Remembering her face when the person she trusted the most swore a life together, and then stabbed her through the heart.

Life has a funny way of returning what you once thought lost.

A ring from Fodlan, an earring from Almyra.

A dagger Claude tucks under his pillow.

“I love him.”

Waking up to a kiss in a bed that’s warm.

“And he loves me.”

If Lam hears him, she gives no indication. The road hollows out again, turning left, then another, and he meets more than one fork in the road in his descent, then, the steps growing rocky, ascent. The darkness never grows lighter, the light never darker. It is only him, every step a step forward.

Him, and the hand that knocks into his, light peering from the corner.

“Dimitri!” Claude’s voice should not be so pleasing in this stillness, and yet Dimitri finds himself at a loss of air as familiar fingers curl around his own, a shoulder knocking into his. “Here you are!”

“Claude,” he repeats, warm, so incredibly warm, “here I am.”

The light is suddenly too much in his eyes, the tunnel too short. He turns, expecting to see an endless descend into black, perhaps the eyes of a well-worn soul.

“Dimitri? Are you okay?” The goddess doesn’t show her hands so easily. Her miracles are tucked into luck, into chance, into the happy accidents in this world. He had thought Lam the same. Someone invisible, someone distant but seeing, whose hands where never to be found in this world.

Dimitri sees the raised stone of a wall that was not there, and a right twist that he did not walk.

“Yes,” he whispers, and then louder, “Yes. I’m alright.”

She had heard him. She had judged him. And then, she had let him go.

“I love you,” Dimitri says, leaning over to kiss Claude. Claude falters, his fingers tightening for a moment, before pressing back.

“I love you too.” Claude raises an eyebrow with his words, though his cheeks are warm, his mouth slanted in that glowing smile. “What brought that on?”

The light, Dimitri could say. The darkness, and its creeping shadows. The hollow pangs of a family lost, to the ocean sprays and glittering skies of a family found. The bitter bites of Faergus winters, the sweltering heat of Almyran summers.

The fact that the words have rattled in his head since the day they met, wearing gold and blue.

“I just wanted to say it.”

Claude squeezes his hand, and he squeezes it back.

**Author's Note:**

> Dmcl week day 4! For the themes: Mythical Creatures
> 
> I really dug into the worldbuilding for this one lol, prooooobably could have made this day 2 for faerghus and almyra but I decided not to since I wanted to do an art piece instead.  
> As it's very clear, I love gods and goddess themes X,D i have a ton of ideas for Almyra's culture that I'd like to dig into for two fics (one which is the wedding one! Update tomorrow for dmcl week lol) The other one coming probably after I finish the wedding one. 
> 
> If you like my fics, come stop on by my [ twitter ](https://twitter.com/shidreamin/)! I'm hosting a giveaway rn (ending soon) and the prize is a 5k commision piece! I will write dmcl lol but I'm also writing for a few other fandoms if you'd like


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